Explain DRM To Your Dad

Ever try to explain why DRM is bad for consumers to someone who just didn’t get it? Wired’s Listening Post Blog has a bunch of good examples. We don’t know if they’d work on your Dad (does Dad give a crap about Linux and Region 2 DVDs?), but they are nice examples of ways that DRM gets in the way of consumer goals. —MEGHANN MARCO

Because I have an older model television with a vcr and a dvd player hooked up to it, I have to run the dvd player through the vcr. Any dvds that have copy protection built into it wont play properly. If I want to play what I’ve paid for, I have to rip it to a cdr to strip the protection – or buy new hardware that allows for two different inputs.

The older generation never understands the newer generations issues. Even if they grasp concepts, their old values encourage them to agree with whichever side you’d rather they didn’t. It’s pretty much the curse of ageing in society, it’s not new, and it’ll never stop – when we’re all in our 70’s, the crap our kids and their kids deem important will look like a waste of time and effort, morally dubious, and the best we’ll be able to do is wish them well with it.

This article would lose most people very quickly. #3 and #4 are very difficult to read and for most older people to understand (how many older people understand the Internet?)

#5 could have just stopped at the fact that the “3 days 3 plays” DRM is applied. Why would a normal person care about somebody’s Creative Commons license? People are probably more interested in the fact that it applies DRM to out-of-copyright music (e.g. classical performances) and self-recorded files like lectures.